Who’s To Blame When A Husband Has An Affair

At age twelve, I witnessed a fight—no, a brawl—between two teenage girls. It was a hot summer day, and they were in the middle of the street, scratching each other’s faces, yanking out each other’s hair, tearing off each other’s clothes, and generally trying to rip each other to shreds. Why? One girl had found out that the other was dating her boyfriend. While they fought, the boyfriend strolled up the street with another girl on his arm, watching the battle unfold in his honor as if he were a common spectator with no stake in why these two girls were fighting.

I wondered why the girls directed their anger solely at each other instead of at the boyfriend. He was the one who had cheated and lied, yet neither of the girls confronted him about that or the new girl in his life. It wasn’t as though they didn’t see him. The truth is, his presence made them fight more viciously. And when he got bored with the rumble and went about his business, it took three parents to pull the two girls apart.

So why was the boyfriend able to walk away scot-free? After years of watching this scenario play out repeatedly with both teenage girls and adult women, and after writing a novel about a woman who knowingly gets involved with a married man, I stumbled upon the answer. It all boils down to one question: Who is to blame when a man has an affair? Oddly enough, it’s not the man. I’ve come to realize that the wife and the other woman place the blame entirely on each other.

From the first flirtatious wink from a husband to another woman, the other woman automatically points the finger at the wife, accusing her of falling down on the job and failing to keep her husband happy, both in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Why does the other woman blame the wife for the husband’s infidelity? Because it frees her conscience. She cannot be held responsible for breaking up a happy home if it was already broken and unhappy. In the other woman’s eyes, the husband turns to her because his wife isn’t fulfilling his needs. Often, the other woman’s battle cry is, “He wouldn’t be coming to me if his wife was doing her job.” Never does it occur to the other woman that the wife is still as fun, loving, giving, and supportive as she was when she and the husband first walked down the aisle. Never does the other woman consider that the husband made a vow to his wife and broke it because of some issue, flaw, or insecurity related to him. Never does she think that the only need the wife is unable to tend to is her husband’s need to sleep with another woman.

Secondly, blaming the wife boosts the other woman’s self-esteem. The husband comes to her because she is better than the wife—more attractive, more exciting, more outgoing, more attentive, more sensual. Blaming the wife makes the other woman feel special, as though she is more than just a fling. She convinces herself that she must be, or he wouldn’t risk his family and reputation to be with her.

Strangely enough, this mindset is shared by the wife as well. The moment the affair is discovered, she elevates the other woman to a mystical being, someone who has the power to make her husband do things he normally wouldn’t do—like sleep with another woman. The wife may be heard saying, “She took my man; if it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t have done it.” In this view, the wife doesn’t see her husband as the culprit. Instead, she views him as a victim who has fallen prey to some loose, manipulative, no-good, mind-controlling, home-wrecking, man-stealing woman.

But there is one person the wife blames more than anyone else for her husband’s infidelity—herself. She looks in the mirror and, with the critical eye of a lifelong enemy, picks herself apart. Piece by piece, she critiques her appearance, her personality, her abilities as a wife, her abilities as a mother, her abilities as a woman, and relentlessly runs herself into the ground. “I didn’t keep the house clean enough,” she berates herself. “I wasn’t supportive enough. I gained too much weight. I didn’t laugh enough with him. I didn’t cry enough with him. I cried too much. I complained too much. I wasn’t affectionate enough. I put too much pressure on him. I didn’t let him be a man. I, I, I, I, I, I.”

Why does the wife blame herself and the other woman? Because it’s less painful. To look herself in the face and admit that her husband knowingly, willingly, and purposefully did something that would break her heart is a difficult reality to survive. If she and the other woman are to blame, she can justify loving and staying with a man who so carelessly cast her love aside. If she is at fault, she believes she has control over the situation and can fix whatever she did wrong to drive him into the arms of another woman.

This is not to say that the wife is a perfect person who does nothing wrong. What it does say is that when a husband has an affair, it is not the fault of an inattentive, overweight, harsh spouse or a lonely, psychotic, mind-controlling, manipulative woman. It is a conscious choice made by the husband. And until women truly understand this painful fact, we are doomed to forever rumble in the middle of the street.